What I learned from a walk on the beach.
I am lucky enough to live near the coast in Los Angeles, California. Since the pandemic, I have been visiting the beach more often and while enjoying the amazing beauty of my surroundings, I have also noticed a lot of garbage. Seeing this garbage made me wonder how we could find a solution to this problem.
I vigarously started google searching and in my research I found out about the Ocean CleanUp Project. The Ocean CleanUp Project is a Dutch company that engineers technology dedicated to cleaning the Ocean’s Garbage Patches. It was founded by a young man named Boyan Slat after he went on a scuba diving trip and saw more plastic than fish.
I immediately wanted to see the latest technology from the Ocean CleanUp Project being utilized in the area where I live. I live right by Ballona Creek where all of the street runoff from the city of Los Angeles meets the Ocean in the Santa Monica Bay. I reached out to the Department of Public Works and found out that they were way ahead of me! I definitely was not the first person to notice the trash problem and I was happy to see that they were working on the problem and were even taking part in the trash interceptor Pilot Project. The timeline is in place for it to be fully operational by Fall of 2021!
After finding out this great news, I had to think to myself how could I help. They have a lot of beach cleanup crews in my area so I was hoping to find a different path to aid the Ocean CleanUp Project. I needed a little bit more information to make this choice. I posted a survey on my socials and some different reddit forums like r/surfing and r/DeTrashed. They were amazing in responding to my survey and gave me some really great results. Over half of the people haven’t even heard of the Ocean CleanUp Project, although everyone that responded wants a clean ocean.
This seems like an area where we can help. Cleaning the plastic out of the ocean and preventing it from flowing into the ocean from rivers is a major concern for 100% of the people that I surveyed. I think the more people that know about the Ocean CleanUp Project, the faster we can get the technology in place to start cleaning up ocean garbage patches.
How can we spread the word about the Ocean CleanUp Project?
I propose to you the #Saltwater Challenge. In this challenge, you can mix a teaspoon of salt with 1 cup of water and drink it, or you can donate to the Ocean CleanUp Project. Let’s spread the word about this important cause and help them get the financial support needed to run pilot programs, implement technology to clean up garbage patches, and prevent more plastic and garbage from flowing into the world’s waterways.